


Ghost in Your Garden

by mereypaige



Category: Goon (2011)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Getting Together, M/M, Not RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:28:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25302349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mereypaige/pseuds/mereypaige
Summary: Doug's got a photographic memory, a sparkler, and a plan. Xavier just wants the hell out of Halifax.
Relationships: Doug Glatt/Xavier LaFlamme, Past Doug Glatt/Eva (Goon), brief Xavier LaFlamme/Original Male Character
Comments: 16
Kudos: 35





	1. Halifax

**Author's Note:**

> Title and all chapter summaries from the song "Ghost" by Jeremy Messersmith. 
> 
> Warning for graphic depictions of a panic attack/fainting episode, as well as descriptions of canon-typical violence, traumatic brain injury, PTSD, and nightmares, and mentions of past drug use and past medical misconduct.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Through parking lots and shopping malls  
>  Rinse my thoughts in alcohol  
> Black clouds  
> Rolling over me” ___

Xavier turns 23 on a game day, and every guy on the team buys him a drink. The drinks have nothing to with his birthday and everything to do with the dick trick he scored an hour ago, but Xavier celebrates quietly anyway as he knocks back something bright green and fizzy Oleg and Evgeny are calling a Nut Buster. Then Doug shoulders his way past where the twins are still making ejaculatory hand gestures with a wide grin and a shot in each hand. One of the glasses has a lit sparkler in it. 

“Happy birthday!” he says, and shoves the glass with the sparkler forward. Xavier takes it and holds it gingerly away from him. 

“Doug, what the fuck is this?” Xavier says. 

“It’s a sparkler!” Doug says.

“Yeah, I see that,” Xavier says. A spark hits his hand and he winces. 

“LaFlamme, what’s the fucking bomb for, huh?” Ronnie yells from across the table. He’s had almost as much to drink as Xavier has, and his voice cuts across the muzak blasting out of the bar’s shitty speakers. 

“It’s his birthday!” Doug shouts, and then before Xavier has a chance to escape, Doug slings his arm around Xavier’s shoulders and pulls him in flush to his side. He starts singing happy birthday, off-key and very loud. 

“Jesus fucking Christ, man, get off me!” Xavier shouts, and shoves at Doug’s waist. More sparks hit his hand and he hisses and drops the shot glass. 

It hits the table and bounces, landing on the floor with a shatter. Rum goes everywhere and the sparkler doesn’t go out. A spark hits the alcohol and it ignites. 

“Fuck!” someone shouts. 

They get kicked out of the bar. Xavier lies in bed that night and nurses the tiny burn on his finger. He doesn’t think about the warmth of Doug’s palm on his waist, and he definitely doesn’t think about Doug singing, his voice going flat on the high notes. He’s a hockey player, dammit, not a moron. 

“Shit,” he mutters. He turns over, punches his pillow a few times for good measure, and goes to sleep. 

It turns out it’s not just Xavier’s birthday that Doug remembers. Doug apologizes to the team for getting them banned from the bar two days later at morning practice. 

“I’m very sorry, and I promise to just get you a normal drink for your birthday tomorrow, Kim,” Doug says. He looks like a scolded Labrador. Xavier sits at his locker across from him and tries not to stare. Kim looks up from his textbook.

“Why do you know when my birthday is?”

“Because you’re on my team,” Doug explains, “and it says so on the website.” 

“What did you do, go through and memorize everyone’s birthdays?”

“Yeah,” Doug says. 

“There’s 23 fuckin’ people on the team, man,” Gordy says. “You seriously memorized every single one?”

“Yeah,” Doug says again, looking less like a kicked dog now and more like a puppy. A really cute puppy. Xavier shakes himself and goes back to re-lacing his skates. Jesus, but he needs to get a goddamn grip. 

“Birthdays are important!” Doug says. “So I know yours, and Coach's, and the managers’, and the trainers’, and Dylan’s.”

“Who is this Dylan?” Evgeni asks. 

"He drives the zamboni!”

Everyone is looking at Doug now, not just Xavier.

“How long did this take you?” Kim asks. 

“Well, I had to ask Dylan and some of the others, ‘cause they weren’t on the website. So maybe a couple days?”

“So what,” Belchie asks, “you got a photographic memory or something?”

“I do, yeah!” Doug says. “My dad says it’s the only reason I graduated high school.”

“No offense,” says Kim, “but your dad sounds like an asshole.”

Xavier stands up. 

“I’m hitting the ice,” he says, and leaves the locker room. 

In the light of this revelation, Xavier re-evaluates. Doug remembers everyone’s birthday, not just his. And he only remembered it in the first place because he can apparently memorize anything he’s read only once. It’s not because Xavier is special, or because Doug is rebounding three months after his breakup with Eva, or something else stupid. It’s fine. He is not disappointed. He channels all his not-disappointment into the game the next night and finishes with two goals and three assists. They beat Syracuse 5-0. Doug buys him and Kim drinks that night, but he doesn’t try and hug Kim. Xavier ducks under Doug’s third attempt and escapes to sit with some puck-bunny. He’s fine. 

Xavier and Doug stumble home from the third bar sometime around four in the morning. Xavier can’t remember leaving the second bar, and he can’t remember any of the rest of the team being at the third. He does remember Doug’s hand hot on his thigh as he leaned over him in the booth to talk to somebody at the next table. He remembers leaning a little too far into Doug’s shoulder as they tripped their way home. He remembers being very, very drunk. In fact, he’s still drunk!

Doug gets the front door open and Xavier practically falls through it and onto the couch. He watches as Doug fills two glasses from the sink and comes over to the couch with them. He hands one to Xavier and then chugs his own. 

“You should drink that,” he says, then belches. Xavier is so attracted to him that it hurts. 

“I was mad that you knew Kim’s birthday,” he says. Doug frowns. 

“Why?” he asks, and sits down on the couch next to Xavier, jostling him. The glass of water in Xavier’s hand sloshes and spills over onto his jeans. 

“Oh man, I’m sorry!” Doug jumps up, but before Xavier can mourn the loss of his body heat Doug is back, dabbing one of their truly disgusting dish towels at the damp spot on Xavier’s pants. And hey, there’s a thought. This is Xavier’s dishtowel, not theirs. It’s not like Doug has bought anything for the apartment beyond food and toilet paper since he moved in. When did Xavier start regarding the things here as belonging to the both of them?

“Fuck!” he groans. 

“What, what?” Doug says. His dabbing becomes frantic.

“This!” Xavier says, gesturing at the towel. “It’s mine! But it’s ours now! But it was mine!”

“Uh,” Doug says. He stops dabbing and holds the towel out. “Do you want it back?”

“Yes!” Xavier says, and snatches the towel from him. It smells horrible. He throws it somewhere behind him. 

Doug sits back down again, and this time their knees are touching. Xavier is drunk enough that he doesn’t flinch away on instinct. 

“Why are you mad?” Doug says. His voice is low and sexy, probably because it’s four in the goddamn morning and they should really really be asleep. Xavier swallows. 

“I’m not mad,” he says. 

“You said you were mad,” Doug says. “Before. And then I spilled water on you. You said you were mad I remembered Kim’s birthday.”

“Oh,” Xavier says. “Yeah. I wanted you to remember my birthday.”

“I did remember your birthday,” Doug says. 

“No!” Xavier says, frustrated. What doesn’t Doug understand? He looks over at Doug and points a finger at him. “I wanted you to remember only my birthday. Not-” he pauses as a wave of dizziness hits him. Wow, he is really drunk. He sways, and Doug catches him at the elbows. This reminds him that he’s angry and he looks up again. Doug’s face is very close. “I wanted you to remember my birthday,” he says again. “Not Kim’s. Or Gordie’s. Or Dylan’s.”

“But they’re on the team,” Doug says. His brow is set in a way that Xavier knows means he’s confused. Xavier has to explain so Doug will understand. 

“I want to be special,” he says. Doug’s brow unknits. 

“Oh,” he says. Then, before Xavier can try and interpret the look on his face, he pulls Xavier closer until his face is tucked into the curve of Doug’s neck. He smells like sweat and booze and stale cigarettes. “You are special,” he says, and Xavier feels the rumble of his voice through his chest. 

“Oh,” Xavier says, and then he doesn’t remember anything else. 

He misses morning practice the next day. He wakes up on the couch, midmorning sunlight streaming through the windows, with the duvet from his bed tucked around him. Doug is gone. 

Doug buys another dish towel. It’s got the Highlanders' mascot on it. Xavier finally does his laundry, and he puts his newly clean dishtowel next to Doug’s on the oven handle. He knows he’s being a moron about it, but he can’t help the feeling that he needs to keep his things and Doug’s things separate in his head, for his own sanity. The next time he catches himself thinking of the dishtowels as theirs, he wins the opening face-off, blows past Toronto’s blue line, and scores the first goal of the game in less than four seconds. He’s vaguely aware that he’s set a new AHL record, but mostly he’s thinking about Doug’s breath in his ear in the ensuing celly. The team buys him another round of drinks that night, and Xavier tells himself it doesn’t mean anything that he drinks the one Doug bought him first. 

The news that Doug has a photographic memory reaches Ronnie when Doug buys him his birthday drink a week later. The tirade that follows almost gets them banned from their second bar. 

“Jesus pissing Christ, Glatt, you waited an entire fucking season and a half to tell me you have goddam camera for a brain?! You didn’t think that would be useful information?! Tell me something, Glatt, do you even want to fucking win, huh?!” Ronnie is red in the face and almost doubled over from yelling so hard. There’s a puddle of beer at his feet from where it’s spilled from his glass as he gesticulates. 

“I do want to win, Coach!” Doug says, hands in front of him like he’s calming a feral moose. Which probably isn’t too far off as similes go, Xavier thinks. 

Xavier’s got his arm around the waist of some blonde chick with gorgeous legs. He scored his twentieth goal of the season four hours ago, and he plans to celebrate by putting his face between this woman’s thighs at some point tonight. Hopefully sooner rather than later. 

“Then fucking act like it!” Ronnie rages, spit flying. 

“I’ve been trying!” Doug says. He motions at Xavier. “I’ve been protecting Xavier as best I can! And he’s been helping us win, Coach!”

“LaFlamme is on track to win the Willie fucking Marshall!” Ronnie yells. “Ha-vee-yay,” he over-pronounces the final syllable, drawing at the “ay” sound in a shitty caricature of how Doug pronounces Xavier’s name. Xavier shifts, suddenly wishing he was anywhere else. “Xavier is not my goddamn problem!”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Coach!” Doug says. “I didn’t mean that Xavier is a problem, uh, I meant-“ Doug is cut off by more yelling from Ronnie, most of it unintelligible. Well, maybe Doug knows what he’s saying. Xavier is too busy replaying all the times Doug has said his name, his stupid American accent stretching out the vowels like that salt-water taffy he brought back from Massachusetts the last time he went home. Shit.

Blondie is looking at him, unimpressed.

“So are we gonna watch your boss skin this guy alive, or are we gonna do something more interesting with our night, Xavier?”

“LaFlamme, he corrects automatically, and her eyes narrow. 

He doesn’t take Blondie home. He does end up drinking so much he vomits when he gets back to the apartment. Doug kneels with him on the cold tile of their bathroom. and Xavier stays leaning over the toilet far longer than he needs to. He closes his eyes, breathes deep, and concentrated on the sensation of Doug’s hands running up and down his spine, the warmth of it seeping through his shirt. 

The next day Ronnie puts Doug to work memorizing player stats for the teams they play in their next roadie. Xavier battles his hangover into submission by running drills with the twins. By the time Doug gets on the ice, Xavier has mostly managed to stuff all his emotions back down into the box where they normally live. He spends the entire rest of practice listening to Doug rattling off statistics for Ronnie. Ronnie has Xavier running plays with the new line they’re trying with him, Kim, and some dipshit rookie they’ve christened Megster. 

Ronnie pulls Xavier aside after practice ends. 

“You know me, I don’t give out compliments,” Ronnie says. “But you’ve doing some good fucking playing this season, LaFlamme. Montreal’s noticed. They don’t want you back yet, but don’t be surprised if they bring you back up for a playoffs run.” He pauses, like he thinks Xavier is going to do something, like burst into tears, or hug him. When he doesn’t respond, Ronnie continues. “Bring your A-game this roadie, LaFlamme, and for fuck’s sake pass the next drug test we do at the end of the month. I don’t know what happened, but this has been a good season for you. Try not to fuck it up.”

Xavier stands in the hallway for a long time after Ronnie leaves, listening to the muffled laughter coming from the locker room. Someone shouts, and he hears Doug’s voice in response. 

People like Doug. It’s obvious. Xavier isn’t so sure people like him. He knows people didn’t like him last year, or the year before that. Now he can’t be sure. He’s been scoring, and the team has been winning, and no-one has mentioned his fuck-tape in about two months, which has to be a record. But this is Halifax, and the AHL, and it’s different. Montreal is like a different universe. Xavier tries to think about going back, about playing with Price and P.K. and the rest, about being friends with them again. He thinks about playing on a team where he doesn’t have a guaranteed enforcer backing him up. He thinks about playing on a team that doesn’t have Doug. 

He stops thinking and goes for a run instead. 

Xavier gets back to the apartment that afternoon to find that Doug has finally made good on his threats to clean it. The ash tray on the coffee table has been emptied, all of the dirty dishes are now sitting in the drying rack, the floor has been honest-to-god mopped, and the windows are open, letting in the sub-arctic December air. 

“Doug, I’m shutting the window, its fucking freezing!” Xavier calls, crossing the room. The mail on the coffee table has been sorted. The table itself is gleaming, like someone — Doug — polished it. Everything smells faintly of citrus. Xavier shuts the window. 

Doug pops his head out around the open bathroom door. 

“You’re home!” he says. He’s holding a toilet brush. Xavier didn’t even know they owned a toilet brush. 

“Hey,” he says, and walks past Doug to his room. The bed is stripped and the floor is clear. “Jesus, Doug, you cleaned here too?” he calls. 

“Yeah! Only a little!” comes Doug’s voice. “I washed the sheets and swept, but I promise I didn’t spy or anything. I just put all the stuff on the floor in the wash or on your desk!” 

Sure enough, there’s a neat pile of random shit on his desk, and a laundry basket full of clean clothes and linen next to it. Right on top sits one of their ratty old dishtowels. Xavier picks it up and walks into the kitchen with it. He stops at the fridge and sticks his head in. It’s been cleaned too. All of their nasty old leftovers have been cleared out and the shelves have been wiped down. With all the rotten food gone they barely have any food left at all. Xavier’s stomach grumbles and he frowns. He hangs the dishtowel next to their other one, the Highlander towel Doug bought two weeks ago. He’s all the way back to his room and putting clean sheets on his bed when he realizes his mistake.

“Goddammit!” he says, and wrestles his pillow into its pillowcase with a little more force than necessary. 

“What’s wrong?” Doug asks, coming into the room. Now he’s holding a spray bottle of Windex. 

“I-” Xavier starts, and then stops. How the fuck does he explain this to Doug? That he what, caught himself thinking of two shitty dishtowels as being jointly owned, and now he’s pissed about it in ways he doesn’t really want to consider? No. Even in his own head he sounds like a lunatic.

“Nothing,” he says. “Just hungry.”

“Let’s go out for food!” Doug says, bouncing a little and grinning. He’s adorable. Fuck, Xavier loves him. Wait- 

“We can go get Thai food at that new place down the road!” Shit shit shit shit shit! 

Doug is still talking, saying something about spring rolls while he grabs his and Xavier’s coats and hustles them out the door into the cold. Fuck this was not in the plan. Whatever the plan was. Xavier doesn’t snap out of it until he nearly breaks his neck slipping on a patch of black ice a block from the restaurant. Doug catches him, and Xavier is slammed back into the present as his breath catches up with him and he realizes he’s got a vice-grip on one of Doug’s muscular forearms. 

“Woah!” Doug says, his laugh a little shaky. “Watch out, Xavier, you gotta look where you’re going! Even I know that!” He slings an arm around Xavier’s waist and walks like that the rest of the way to the restaurant. Xavier lets him. 

Xavier panics the second night of their roady and sleeps with a girl after their win in Scranton. It’s been weeks since he’s gotten any, and they win twenty seconds into overtime after a hat trick from him and two consecutive goals from the Penguins put them neck and neck at the end of the third. He wins the face-off, passes to Kim, and looks up to see one the Penguins' d-men hurtling at him for a check. Then Doug slams into the Penguin, sending them both spiraling left. Xavier’s clear, and Kim makes it past his own blocker, passes to Xavier, and Xavier whips the puck into the goal top shelf. The game ends with Doug and the Penguin still punching each other, but the refs let through Xavier’s goal, and the Highlanders all pour out into an unsuspecting Scranton to celebrate Xavier’s second dick trick of the season. 

Xavier ends up in a bar with Doug and Belchie on one side and a very attractive woman with black hair and freckles on the other. They’re all pressed close together at the bar, and Xavier can feel himself hurtling rapidly towards a bad decision involving his hand and Doug’s upper thigh, so he turns to the girl and stays that way the rest of the night. 

He is not in love with Doug. 

The girl’s name is Olivia. And look at that! She’s from Quebec. 

Ok, so he’s in love with Doug, big deal! He’ll get over it. 

Xavier’s game is so much better in Quebecois than in English. Tonight is in the bag. 

He can do this. All he has to do is live with Doug and work with Doug and spend all his free time with Doug and not let it slip that he’s in love with Doug. Yeah.

Olivia wants to take this back to her place. Perfect. 

He’ll be fine! He can do this. He can sleep with Olivia, and then when they get back to Halifax he’ll find another girl. 

Let it be said that even drunk, Xavier knows what to do with his mouth. 

And another girl. 

Olivia makes gorgeous noises when she comes. And god, she’s so soft. 

And another girl. And then Montreal will call him up.

Olivia rides him into the mattress and Xavier lets her take the lead, running his hands up her thighs and across her stomach. Her bellybutton is pierced. It’s cute. 

He’ll move to Montreal and he’ll never see Doug again. And then it won’t matter if he’s in love with him. 

“I’ve got work tomorrow so I’m going to bed,” Olivia murmurs. “Stay the night? I know a good coffee place downtown where we could do breakfast.”

Xavier makes it two hours lying wide awake next to a sleeping Olivia before he gives up, gets dressed, and goes back to the hotel. 

Their next game is in Providence. Doug’s weird friend Pat apparently can’t make the drive from whatever nowhere Massachusetts town Doug is from, but his brother Ira comes down from Boston to see the game. They don’t win (fuck the Bruins, seriously), but Xavier scores his thirtieth goal for the season and Doug nearly loses a tooth beating up the asshole who checked Xavier into the glass in the second period, so Xavier is still feeling pretty good when Doug pulls him aside in the locker room after. 

“It’s Ira’s husband’s birthday today!” Doug says. His cheeks are still flushed from the game and he’s changed into a very smart button up shirt and slacks that Xavier has never seen before. He’s pretty sure Doug bought his game-day suit from the Value Village in Bayer’s Lake. “They want to celebrate with me and said I could bring a plus one!” His face turns serious, and Xavier suddenly understands viscerally what teenage girls in America must feel right before their crushes ask them to prom. “Xavier,” Doug says, “will you be my plus one?”

Xavier feels breathless. He is so, so doomed. 

“Yeah, Doug,” he says, voice far breathier than feels healthy. “Sure.”

Ronnie calls Xavier just as he and Doug exit their cab somewhere in downtown Providence. 

“Where the fuck are you and Glatt?! Did you get lost on the way to the fucking bar?”

“I-” Xavier starts. Fuck, any way he describes this is it’ll sound like a fucking date. Fantastic. “We-” Ronnie cuts him off. 

“I don’t care! Just don’t be late for the bus tomorrow! And LaFlamme, don’t forget we’ve got that drug test when we get back. Don’t be an idiot.” He hangs up. 

Shit. Xavier looks down at his phone. He knows it’s not how any of this works, but in his head that test is the last thing between him and getting his career with the Habs back. And he’s clean, he’s been clean for months, ever since Doug nearly died beating up Ross Rhea and they ended their Calder run in Round 2 to fucking Houston. He’d had nightmares and flashbacks about Rhea for weeks after, but he’d hung on, compensating for the ecstasy with cigarettes and whiskey and weed. But if he fails the test, he can be sure he’ll be in Halifax for the rest of his life. And so will Doug. Maybe. 

“Xavier!” Xavier snaps his head up. Doug is looking at him. Fuck his jacket looks good. Where the hell did he find time to buy a jacket that nice? “Xavier, are you ok?” Doug asks, and he steps closer, one hand out as though to touch Xavier. Xavier, impressively, doesn’t flinch. 

“I’m fine,” he says, and walks past Doug to the building in front of them. There’s a line out the door and a bouncer, who just nods when he sees Xavier’s and Doug’s IDs and waives them through the VIP entrance. It’s only then that Xavier bothers to look around and figure out where they are. 

The club is fairly large, with a bar along one wall and a stage at one end. It’s not very busy, considering it’s a Wednesday and still only ten, but there are a few groups on the dance floor rocking out to something decidedly 80s, and quite a few people at the tables that line the edge of the floor. Almost everyone Xavier can see is a dude. 

“Doug!” he hisses, leaning too close to be heard above the music. Doug smells like the good cologne they keep around the apartment for when they have to do press. Fuck. “Doug, is this a gay bar?”

“Yeah!” Doug says. He spots someone and waves. Xavier looks in that direction and sees Ira and a man he doesn’t recognize, who must be his husband. “My brother is gay.”

“I’m aware, Doug,” Xavier says. He is not going to panic. He is going to be fine. He’s 23 years old, for fuck’s sake. He can do this. 

He can not do this.

“Your accent is so cute! How long did you say you two have been together, Doug?” Ira’s husband Richard is sweet, flirty, and definitely tipsy. 

“We’ve been playing together since February last year!” Doug says. Or shouts, really. He’s had three beers and that’s usually when his volume starts to increase.

“Ok, but when did you start dating?” Richard presses. Doug opens his mouth and Xavier cuts him off. 

“We are not dating,” he says, and takes a swig of beer. “Doug is my roommate, he backs me up on the ice. He’s a good friend.”

“Oh, okay,” Richard says, drawing out his words and raising his eyebrows. 

“Xavier is one of my best friends!” Doug says, and hauls Xavier in for a one-armed hug. “He’s special!”

Xavier feels his cheeks burning and thanks God and all His angels that the club’s strobing lights cover his blush. 

Ira comes back from the bar. 

“Hello, gorgeous,” he says to Richard, putting down the next round of drinks on the table and sweeping Richard into a kiss. 

Xavier turns to see Doug gazing at his brother slightly misty-eyed and snorts. 

“What’s going on with you? Stop making that face at your brother, man, it’s gross!”

“It’s just,” Doug says, “they’re so happy. It makes me happy. Love is so nice, you know?”

“Sure, man,” Xavier says, and turns back to his beer. “Whatever you say.”

“We’re gonna go dance!” Richard says, and then he and Ira are twisting out onto the dance floor, shimmying to the ABBA song blasting out of the sound system. 

“Xavier, we should dance too!” Doug shouts. 

“Oh no, no way,” Xavier says, but then Doug has both of Xavier’s hands in his hands, and he’s swaying back and forth in an awkward two-step to the rhythm. Xavier thinks about pulling away, but that fourth beer is making its way through his system and he thinks, fuck it. He starts swaying too, bouncing a little as the synths to Gimme Gimme Gimme play out above the crowd. 

“Wow, Xavier, you’re a good dancer!” Doug says. 

“No,” Xavier replies, laughing, “you’re just shit!” 

“Hey!” Doug says, but he smiles good-naturedly, and then looks down with concentration at their feet. Xavier laughs again. He feels good. Loose. There’s no-one from the team here, just him and Doug and bunch of gay dudes who probably don’t care about minor league hockey. Xavier shakes himself gently away from Doug’s grip and reaches up to wind his arms around Doug’s neck instead. Doug looks up from their feet and his hands come to land on Xavier’s waist. 

“It’s easier to dance like this,” Xavier says.

“What?” Doug shouts.

Xavier tips forward a little so their chests are flush and leans in so he can shout in Doug’s ear.

“It’s easier like this!” he yells. He leans back again to look at Doug. 

“Okay!” Doug says. “Awesome!” 

Ira and Richard don’t come back for a while, and Xavier and Doug dance through the next three songs before calling time-out for another round of drinks. 

“That was fun, Xavier!” Doug says. “Can we do it again, sometime?”

Turns out five-drink Xavier likes to make promises a sober Xavier would never keep. 

“Sure, Doug,” he says. “I would like that.”

Xavier sits next to Doug on the long bus ride home. He’s worried that Doug is going to say something about where they went last night, but no one asks, and Xavier doesn’t press the issue. Doug doesn’t bring it up when they get home either, except for a casual, “Man I love roadies!” over take-out. Xavier feels relived and disappointed. Then he tells himself to get a grip and escapes to the gym. 

Someone gets the better of Doug at their next home game, some two-meter-tall ass-wipe rookie from the Monsters who gets a punch in early. Doug skates back to the bench after his penalty and Xavier nudges him. 

“I’m gonna score a goal for you man, next shift,” he says. He chances a look at Doug. Doug is sitting there grinning like an idiot. His eye is starting to swell up and he’s got a scab forming where his lip has split, and Xavier wants to kiss him. 

“Okay, Xavier,” Doug says. 

“LaFlamme, it’s your line, get the fuck out there, boys!” Ronnie yells, and Xavier jumps up over the boards.

He remembers trying to do this at that last game against the Shamrocks and fucking it up royally. He’s a better player now, more like the second overall draft pick he was at 18 than the washed-up asshole he was at 22. He skates forward and steals the puck out from under the Monsters' right winger. He can fucking do this. 

He twists and feints past the forward, picking up the puck on the other side of him and passing it to Megster, who loses it to the Monsters' offense. The twins stop the attempt on goal and get the puck back up into the offensive zone, where Kim grabs it and passes to Megster again. He breaks past the first of the Monsters' d-men and Xavier sprints up center ice for the pass. Megster slams the puck in his direction, Xavier gets it, finds himself cut off by the ass-wipe who punched Doug, so he passes to Kim on the his left and feints that way, dodges a check from Ass-Wipe, intercepts the pass back from Kim, turns, and drives the puck into the net past the goalie’s outstretched hand. Then all his breath leaves him as Kim and Megster slam into him from different directions, whooping and hollering as the horn blares overhead. 

When he gets back to the bench Ronnie slaps him on the shoulder with a “Nice play, LaFlamme, fuck them into next week!” and then Doug grabs him in a bear hug. 

“Thank you, Xavier!” he says, and Xavier hides his grin in Doug’s shoulder. “I really like my goal, it was the best!”

“You’re welcome, Doug,” Xavier says, and laughs. 

Xavier stops to light up a cigarette outside the bar that night. He was smoking four or five a day over the summer, especially once he stopped buying weed when the nightmares subsided in July, but he’s managed to get it down to that many a week now. He’s bringing the cigarette to his mouth when Doug stops him with a hand on his arm. 

“You shouldn’t smoke those, they’re not good for you,” Doug says. “I know, because my dad and brother are doctors.” He’s got a stern expression on his face, like Xavier’s a kid who ate too much candy. It’s cute. Xavier smirks. Before he can think about it too hard he reaches up and pats Doug on the cheek. He sees Megster out of the corner of his eye and doesn’t let his hand linger. 

“I know, man,” he says. He takes a drag on the cigarette and then flicks it into the ashtray next to the door. “I’m quitting, it’s a work in progress.”

“Oh, okay, great!” Doug says. “You stopped doing ecstasy after playoffs, so I know you can do it.”

“You knew about that?” Xavier asks. It’s the first time anyone on the team besides Ronnie has mentioned drugs to Xavier in months. He didn’t know if anyone on the team even knew that he’d quit. Not that it was any of their fucking business. 

“Of course!” Doug says. “I’m really proud of you.” He grins and turns away to enter the bar. 

“Dude!” Megster says. “You did ecstasy? Can you hook me up?”

“No,” Xavier says, and he follows Doug into the bar. 

Xavier scores his 35th goal for the season on the last game before Christmas, and Ronnie pulls him aside after the game to tell him once again not to fuck up his drug test. Apparently there’s been more concrete communication from Montreal — if he keeps performing well and keeps his head down, he could be pulled up as soon as the beginning of January. 

Doug gets on a train back to Massachusetts right after the game, laden down with Highlanders merch as Chanukah gifts for his cousins. Xavier takes the opportunity of an empty apartment to get dangerously drunk. He considers going out to find someone to fuck, but he hasn’t slept with anyone since Olivia, and if he’s really being honest with himself, he doesn’t want to. What he wants is to sleep with Doug. To let Doug get his huge hands on his neck and chest and hips and thighs, to feel what it’s like to stand chest to chest with him without any clothes in the way. 

He tips his head back against the couch and groans. And shit, but he’s been calling it “their” apartment again, and it’s a lost cause on the dishtowels, it always was. And why does he care so much? Because he’s gonna keep winning, because Doug makes him want to win, and then he’s gonna go back to Montreal, and everyone there is gonna fucking hate him, and Doug won’t be there, so will he even want to win anymore? He should stay here, where it’s safe. Smoke a ton of weed, fail his drug test, and stay here with Doug. Who thinks he’s special. Stay here with Doug, and keep playing for the Highlanders, and turn 24, and then 25. Play minor league hockey for the rest of his life. 

He opens his eyes. He doesn’t want to stay here, of course he doesn’t. He wants the NHL career Rhea stole from him, wants to make good on his preteen dream of winning a Stanley Cup, not a Calder. Wants to travel by plane, not a shitty bus with a piss-hole in the back. He wants Doug, because Doug is nice to him, but Doug is nice to everyone. Doug remembers everyone’s birthdays, not just his. Doug would probably say Dylan who drives the zamboni was special if someone asked him. Hell, Doug and Eva broke up in July, but all it took was her showing up to their home opener in October for them to start texting again.

“I hate this,” Xavier says out loud to the empty apartment. “I hate this, I hate this.” He falls asleep there on the couch. He wakes up at 2am, freezing his ass off. He stumbles into bed and dreams about the hospital room he lived in for that awful week in the spring of his rookie year. In his dream, Doug visits him. He brings flowers. 

The day of the drug test, Xavier pisses into a cup and hands it over to the tech from the IWK with the feeling that he’s agreeing to something he doesn’t fully understand. Whatever. He didn’t give into his pipe dream and get high the night before, so whatever happens now, it’s out of his hands. 

Ronnie pats him on the back as the tech leaves. 

“Believe it or not, I’m proud of you LaFlamme,” he says. 

“Sure, Coach,” Xavier says, and leaves to change for practice. 

It occurs to Xavier three games into January that he should talk to Doug about Montreal. They’ll have to figure out the apartment after all. But then Ronnie gets a call and suddenly Xavier is suffering through the humiliation of the 2013 Dunkin fucking Donuts All Star Blow Out Dicks Out Played Out Money Grab Bitch-Off Bonanza or whatever the fuck they’re calling it this year. Ryan Hamilton scores a hat trick and the Western Conference wins anyway. Xavier limps home from Providence with a bruised ego and a sore ankle from where he turned funny on the ice, and the last thing he wants to do after that is talk. So he keeps putting it off, and then it’s too late. 

In early February Ronnie comes into the locker room after practice and says he has news. Xavier looks up from his conversation with Kim and Megster. Their line has been coming together even better in the new year, and Xavier scored his fortieth point for the season two games ago. He’s had four hat tricks so far this season, which is two less than the AHL record, but one better than his personal best. He hasn’t felt this good about his hockey since he was 18. It's been a good month. 

“Alright,” Ronnie says, looking around the room. “This has been a good fucking season, and I’m damn proud of all of you. But there’s gonna be some changes. Stephenson!” He points at Stevsie, who stands up, startled. “Congratulations, kid, you’re getting an A. Do me proud.”

“An A?” Stevsie asks, turning to look at Xavier. In fact, now everyone is looking at Xavier. He never did get that A back from Doug. “But I thought-” 

“And LaFlamme!” Ronnie continues over the top of Stevsie, “Round of a-fucking-plause for you, you’re being sent up. Some dipshit rookie sprained his wrist and he’s out four games. You’ll be back with us by the end of next week, but play like you have been playing and you’ll be looking at something more permanent in the spring.”

Someone claps Xavier on the back, and people start whooping. Xavier pastes on a grin and goes along with the celebration. He doesn’t look at Doug. 


	2. West Coast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Broke my heart with sticks and stones  
>  Swore I'm never coming home  
> Last words  
> Never written down” ___

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for a graphic description of a fainting episode/panic attack later in this chapter. To skip, go from "Xavier feels a rush…" to “...forgot his coat inside."

The Habs want him back for four games in California and Arizona, and Xavier is quietly grateful he won’t have to play in Montreal itself. The Highlanders have played away games in Quebec five times so far this season, and every time he’s been welcomed home with insults and soda thrown at his face. So California sounds nice. 

He arrives in Montreal a day before the Habs head out so he can meet with the coaching team, management, and his piece-of-shit agent, get in some ice time with the team, and get the hell out of Halifax before he has to watch Doug buy Evgeni and Oleg drinks for their birthday. The Hab’s captain meets him at the airport and drives him straight to the rink. Gionta didn’t join the Habs until after Xavier left, and it’s a relief to have his first real interaction with a Habs player in three-plus years be with someone who doesn’t know him. Gionta is nice enough, and Xavier feels himself relax just a fraction. 

The time passes in a blur. None of his old teammates seem thrilled to see him, but hockey is hockey, and the line the coaches put him on with Desharnais and Pacioretty works out fine. He knows both of them from their time on the Highlanders, and the fact that they don’t hate his guts enough to refuse to play with him seems like a good sign. He’s shoved in front of the Habs’ media team after morning skate, and he rattles off some lines about how he’s “glad to be back” and “ready to evolve his play” and whatever else dumb shit they need him to say. It’s less terrible than he thinks it’s gonna be. Even just at practice, he can tell — the atmosphere is different here. The Highlanders are having one of their best seasons on record, but even with that the mood can’t match the low-level fervor that pervades the entire stadium and training facility here every minute of every day. Xavier can’t help it, and instead he leans into it — he’s gonna get to play some real fucking hockey, and he can’t fucking wait. 

He sits next to a 21-year-old rookie called Simon Jonasson on the flight west. Jonasson was the Habs first round draft pick last spring and a promising offensive player, and he’s got the stats to prove it. He also won’t shut the fuck up. 

“Xavier, you speak Quebecois, right?” Jonasson asks the minute they’re in the air. 

“It’s LaFlamme,” Xavier corrects automatically, “and yeah, I’m from Quebec.”

“Awesome! Will you teach me some?” Jonasson says, leaning forward. His hair flops down in front of his eyes, and his accent is precise and boyish — this kid went to a nice school in Sweden. It’s cute. Jonasson is cute. Xavier leans back. 

“Uh, I’m not a good teacher. Doesn’t everyone else speak Quebecois anyway?”

“Not at the rink!” Jonasson complains. “And I want to talk to people at bars and stuff! Please teach me?”

“Uh,” Xavier says again. 

“Don’t let him start, LaFlamme,” Pacioretty says from the row behind them. “He’s convinced girls won’t talk to him unless he speaks perfect French. Teach him some swear words and he’ll leave you alone.”

“Hey!” Jonasson starts, but Xavier waves Pacioretty off. 

“Fine,” he says. “I will teach you…” he thinks for a moment. “Six swear words. And then I am sleeping the rest of this flight.”

“Hey, thanks man, uh, merci!” Jonasson says. Xavier wonders if he’s imagining the pink on Jonasson’s cheeks. 

He steps off the plane in LA to a blast of hot air and a missed call from Doug. He pockets his phone and swallows down his guilt. In the hours following Ronnie’s announcement, he went out of his way to avoid Doug, staying at the rink late and taking an early taxi to the airport the next morning. If Montreal wants him back for good, he’s not gonna see Doug again. Might as well start getting used to it. 

They lose the game against the Kings. P.K. scores their only goal of the night, and Xavier barely gets any ice time. One of their d-men gets into a fight with a left-winger from the Kings in the first period. Xavier is on the ice when it happens, and he has to take a couple deep breaths when he remembers that Doug isn’t there to sort it all out. The effort he expends not flinching away from any oncoming checks means that by the end of the game he’s shaky and exhausted. 

The team is in a bad mood in the locker room, and only a few of them want to go out for drinks, so Xavier seizes the opportunity to head back to the hotel. Turns out he’s rooming with the rookie from the plane, but Jonasson isn’t in the room when Xavier gets there. He strips and lies in bed awake for a long time, wishing he hadn’t forgotten his cigarettes back in Halifax but too tired to run out and get any now. Eventually he falls into an uneasy sleep, and he dreams about Ross Rhea lunging at him from across an empty ice rink. 

They win in Anaheim. There’s another fight just five minutes in, but Xavier isn’t on the ice, and he pulls himself the fuck back together to score the second goal of the night eight minutes later with an assist off Desharnais. Desharnais pounds him on the back in the ensuing celly, and it’s enough to remind Xavier about why he’s here, why he didn’t fail his damn drug test, why he got on that plane to Montreal. The game goes to a shootout, and he cheers as loud as everyone else when Markov scores the winning shot. 

The press corner him after, wanting to know how he feels about scoring his first NHL goal since his injury almost four years ago. 

“It feels good,” he says. He grins, and he means it. “It feels real good.”

He gets comfortably drunk with the rest of the team that night, and he and Jonasson stumble back to their hotel room together. This time he is definitely not imagining Jonasson’s blush as he pulls off his shirt and kicks off his shoes. 

“Want some advice?” Xavier says. Jonasson startles and looks up from where he’d definitely been ogling one of Xavier’s tattoos. 

“What?” he says, pink and adorable. He’s like Doug, big and dumb and innocent looking, with puppy-dog eyes. This is a stupid idea. Xavier is buzzed enough to do it anyway.

“Learn to get a poker face,” Xavier says. “You look at some other player like you’re looking at me and you’re gonna get punched in the nose.”

“I’m not gay,”Jonasson says, seemingly on reflex. He’s still blushing madly. Xavier wonders if he’s seen the fucktapes. 

“Not saying you are,” Xavier says. “But if you want me to suck your dick you’ve only got so much time before I’m back in Halifax.”

Jonasson flushes bright red all the way to the roots of his hair when he comes. Xavier lies in bed after trying to remember if he was that cute right after he’d turned 21. Not fucking likely, he thinks. He doesn’t even remember his 21st birthday. He thinks it involved some kind of close call with the police, but he only found that out afterwards. He’d spent the year running from press and nightmares, trying to numb himself against flashbacks and panic attacks. It had been a shitty, shitty year. But right now he’s blissed out and sexed out, exhausted from the game and Jonasson’s curious mouth both, and if he dreams about anything, it’s a gummy smile and rough hands, and the words, “You’re special, Xavier,” whispered soft and secret in his ear.

The win and the mutual blowjobs carry him through the next two games, both of which they lose. Xavier doesn’t score again, but he gets an assist in Phoenix and a truly spectacular shot on goal in San Jose. He also gets three more calls and a dozen texts from Doug. He answers the texts, mostly in one-word answers. He tries to convince himself he’s not looking forward to being back in Halifax so he can see Doug again, fails, and drowns his sorrows in a round of commiseratory shots someone buys the team after their loss in Phoenix. He dreams about Rhea again that night, but he chalks it up to too much alcohol and goes back to sleep. 

After they lose 4-0 to the Sharks, Doug calls again, and Xavier finally picks up. 

“I watched the game,” Doug says. “At that bar next to the laundromat. The one with the broken foosball table.” 

“Yeah?” Xavier asks. “So you saw my shot, yeah?”

“I did, Xavier, it was awesome! I wished I was there for the third period though, I would have punched that guy who checked you.”

“Two fights in one game and I would think I was back in Halifax,” Xavier says. He feels warm all over. He should not be feeling like a lovesick teenager every time Doug expresses that he wants to fight someone for him (it is literally his job, for Christ’s sake), but here he is. 

“I wish you were back in Halifax,” Doug says, and yawns. “The team misses you.”

“Do you miss me?” Xavier asks, and then tries not to punch himself. 

“Of course, Xavier,” Doug says. "When you get back, let’s go get Thai food again.”

“Okay,” Xavier says. He wonders if Doug will put his arm around his waist again on the walk there. “Let’s do it.”

He and Jonasson don’t hook up again, but they share a room the entire roadie, and Xavier teaches him enough French to make it through a basic bar flirtation. He also tells him about the nightclub in Toronto with the strict “no photo” policy that every closeted queer celebrity in Canada has been to at least once. It’s the least he can do for the kid. Jonasson gives Xavier his number, and Xavier wonders if he’s made a friend. He tries not to feel proud of himself, but isn’t too disappointed when he fails. 

After the balmy 25-degree weather of the American Southwest, the freezing air in Halifax is like a slap in the face. Doug picks him up from the airport in the rattly old Mazda he bought after playoffs last year. The heat is blasting inside, and Xavier takes a moment to lean back in the passenger seat with his eyes closed. A rough hand settles on his cheek, and he startles and turns towards Doug. The movement puts his lips in contact with Doug’s palm.

“Your cheeks were so red, I wanted to touch them,” Doug explains. “Wow, your lips are so cold!” He starts to move his hand away, and without thinking Xavier reaches up and catches his wrist.

“I-“ he starts, and he doesn’t know now to continue. What the hell is he doing? Let go, moron, he thinks, and lets go. “Thanks for picking me up,” he says.

“Of course!” Doug says, and he moves his hand from Xavier’s face back to the wheel. They pull out into the stream of airport traffic. Xavier looks out the window and lets himself doze. Doug keeps up a stream of chatter about the team and the games Xavier missed. They’re almost home when Doug turns to him at a red light and asks, “So did you have a good time?”

Xavier thinks about it. He’s not sure how he feels when his answer is, “Yeah, I did. But I’m glad to be back.”

They go to the Thai restaurant that night. Xavier doesn’t slip on the pavement this time, and Doug doesn’t touch him on the walk there. Or on the walk back. Xavier pretends the weird feeling in his stomach is relief.

Two nights later it’s Stevsie’s birthday and the night before one of their free days, and the team is some of the drunkest Xavier has ever seen them. Their win three hours ago pushed them to the top of the league for the first time in almost two decades, and at this point they’re guaranteed a play-off slot. Everyone is celebrating. Doug buys Stevsie a drink, and then gets roped into a game with him and some other players where they make him recite back Wikipedia articles he’s read. Xavier stays out of the way, watching the Hab’s game against the Oilers on the bar’s flat screen instead. Doug is two paragraphs through the article for “penis” when it happens. 

There’s a shared gasp and groan from the people gathered closest to the bar, and it spreads out through the crowd as people look up. The wave hits the Highlander table and crests into a chorus of “fuck”s and “Jesus Christ”s. Xavier looks up from his beer just in time to see the instant replay. He watches in slow motion as Simon Jonasson is shoved sideways into the boards with devastating force, his legs buckling as his helmet cracks hard into the glass. The player that rammed him keeps skating, and Jonasson tips backwards and sideways onto the ice. Even thousands of kilometers away, through the filter of the TV screen and the shitty bar lighting, Xavier can see the blood on the ice. 

Xavier feels a rush go through his whole body, and he flashes hot, then cold. His vision and hearing tunnel, and he squeezes his eyes shut. When he opens them, he’s kneeling on the floor. Through the crush of bodies he can see the screen; Jonasson is getting carried away on a stretcher. 

“Jesus Christ, LaFlamme!”

His hearing is back. Ronnie is in front of him. On anyone else his expression might be concern. Ronnie just looks equal parts constipated and pissed off. 

Xavier tries to stand up. He’s got to get out of here, he knows what comes next. His eye is already starting to twitch. A hand to his shoulder stops him. He looks sideways, and there’s Doug. 

“Are you okay?” he asks. “I think you just fainted, we should-” 

“I’m fine,” Xavier says, trying to sound more okay than he is. He manages to stand and grab his phone and wallet off the table. “Too much beer.” He makes a break for the door, tossing “Gonna go home and sleep it off” over his shoulder as a parting excuse, and then he’s outside and breathing great lungfuls of frigid night air. He throws himself behind a dumpster round the side of the building and falls on his ass as his legs finally give out. He’s buzzing all over, his eyes and lips are twitching, and he drops his phone and wallet onto the pavement as his hands clench involuntarily into tight, painful claws. It’s like the worst kind of pins and needles, and he grits his teeth against the pain. He’d forgotten how bad these were.

He closes his eyes and starts counting his breaths. When he gets to a hundred, everything will be ok. 

He hears someone burst out of the bar and call his name, but he ignores it. His phone lights up. He ignores that too. 

Slowly, slowly, the horrible buzzing retreats, and his thumbs relax from where they were pressed hard into his palms. He makes it to a hundred breaths, then takes a couple more. He stands. He feels shaky and slightly nauseous, but otherwise alright. He turns down the alley in the opposite direction of the bar and goes to find a taxi. His teeth are chattering violently before he realizes he forgot his coat inside. 

The taxi driver is quiet, listening to some soft rock station on the radio, and Xavier slumps gratefully in the back seat. He hasn’t had an attack like that in years. He supposes that after the nightmares in California he should have been expecting it. They’ve always come in cycles. 

After their thing in California, Xavier had looked Jonasson up properly. He was tall, fast, and reliable. The Oiler who took him out had been massive. Before tonight he’d been on track to break the record of most goals scored in a rookie season — Xavier’s record. Xavier thinks about the blood on the ice. Poor fuck, he wasn’t gonna be setting any records anytime soon. Xavier knows a season-ending hit when he sees one. When he feels one. That Oiler, slamming Jonasson head-first into the boards. Ross Rhea, sending Xavier sprawling across the ice, his blood leaving a trail behind him-

“Dude, are you high or something?” Xavier snaps his head up. The driver is looking at him in the rearview mirror with narrowed eyes. Xavier realizes he’s been hyperventilating. 

“No,” Xavier says. He glances out the window and recognizes his street. He pulls out his wallet. “I’m getting out here.”

He gives up on sleep at four in the morning. His mind won’t shut the fuck up. He keeps seeing Jonasson, then Rhea, then his own hospital room, then Jonasson’s stretcher, then Ronnie’s face, then Doug (“I think you just fainted-”), then back again to Jonasson, again and again, over and over and over-

“Screw this,” he says out loud, and gets out of bed. He wraps his duvet around himself and pads out to the living room. It’s dark, and he’s not paying attention to where he’s going. He manages to stub his toe on the leg of the kitchen table and fall, taking out a chair on his way to the floor. 

“Fuck!” he roars. 

Then, of course, Doug comes stumbling out his room with his fists raised. When he sees Xavier sprawled out on the floor he relaxes. 

“Woah, are you ok?”

“I’m fine, Doug, go back to sleep.” Doug walks across the room anyway. He lifts the chair from where it’s pinning Xavier to the ground and then hauls Xavier to his feet. 

“Are you having trouble sleeping?” he asks. 

“No, I love being awake at four in the morning,” Xavier grumbles. Doug is warm and sleep-soft standing there next to him, and Xavier is so fucking tired, and his brain-to-mouth filter got left back at the bar. 

“Let’s sit on the couch,” Doug says.

“Okay,” Xavier says, and sits. Doug follows him and sits close enough that their thighs touch. Xavier can feel the heat of him through the duvet. His eyelids droop. 

“You know,” Doug says, “this one time, when I was 15, my friends built this bike ramp behind a hospital. And as I was going up the ramp, this bloody rag blew right in my face. I was going so fast, and I crashed into the dumpster.”

Xavier turns his head to look at Doug. Doug has got his head leaned back against the back of the couch, eyes closed. 

“What?” Xavier asks. 

“I landed really bad,” Doug says. "I broke my ankle in three different places. It hurt so bad, Xavier, I thought I was gonna die. But the worst part is I landed on this bag of pee, and it exploded and went all over me.”

Xavier snorts. He’s still looking at Doug, and Doug opens his eyes and smiles in his direction. They’re still looking at each other when Doug starts speaking again. 

“Everything hurt, and it all smelled bad, and then for a week everything I touched smelled like pee. And I would dream about it.”

Doug shifts and puts his hands together in his lap. He’s still looking at Xavier. 

“I would have these nightmares about how bad it hurt, and everything would smell like pee, and it was so awful. And I didn’t tell my parents, because they were so mad I went on the bike ramp. They were really scary dreams.”

“What did you do?” Xavier asks. His voice comes out soft. The air between him and Doug feels close, and secret.

“I told Ira,” Doug says. “He’s a really good big brother. I was still shorter than him, and he let me sleep in his bed until the nightmares went away.” Doug finally looks away, and Xavier exhales. 

“I told Eva about the ramp,” Doug says. “But you’re the first person since my brother that I’ve told about the dreams.” He looks at Xavier again, and leans into his space. “You can sleep in my bed with me, if you want,” Doug says. “Until your nightmares go away.”

And how the hell is Xavier supposed to say no to that?

Xavier doesn’t know how to feel the next morning. On the one hand, Doug had prefaced the whole bed sharing thing by telling him his brother used to do it for him. His brother. It’s got to be the least romantic come-on Xavier has heard in his life. On the other hand, Doug apparently cuddles in his sleep. Xavier wakes up barely able to breathe from where he’s got 200 pounds of Doug practically on top of him. Doug’s arm is slung over his waist, his leg is hiked up over Xavier’s calf, his breath is warm on his neck. He’s got some morning wood going on that is not helping Xavier’s own situation vis-a-vis his dick. Doug is so warm. On the other other hand, Simon Jonasson is probably in some piece-of-shit hospital in Edmonton, looking dead-eyed out the window while some doctor reads out the diagnosis for traumatic brain injury. 

Xavier gets out of bed. 

It’s one of their few days off, but Xavier goes to the rink anyway. He laces up and runs suicides up and down the rink until he’s so exhausted he can’t think. Then he eats a granola bar, steps outside for a cigarette, and gets on an elliptical for an hour. He practically falls asleep in the shower. He’s slumped on the bench in the locker room, trying to summon up the energy to walk home, when Ronnie comes in. 

“Good,” he says. “Thought I saw you here, means I don’t have to call. Get your ass to my office, you’ve got ten minutes.” He walks out again. Xavier reaches for another cigarette. 

Richard “The Dick” Harper, Xavier’s piece-of-shit agent and general all-around asswipe, is laughing at something Ronnie is saying when Xavier shows up at Ronnie’s office seven minutes later. 

“Xavier!” he says, “Good to see you man! Was just hearing from Ronnie here about how you fainted last night. Don’t worry, I won’t tell Montreal.” He gives an exaggerated wink. Xavier ignores him and sits down in front of Ronnie’s desk. For all Ronnie’s rages and borderline alcoholism, his desk is organized and clean. His office smells like air-freshener. Ronnie looks at him over the top of a stack of papers. 

“You look like shit, LaFlamme,” he says. 

“What do you want, Coach?” Xavier asks. 

“Montreal wants you for the rest of the season,” Ronnie says. “You’re replacing Jonasson.” He gestures down at the stack of paper. Xavier focuses on it instead of the roiling in his gut. Goddammit he wants another cigarette. “This has all the details. Get Dick to explain them to you. You leave tomorrow morning. We’ll get someone into your apartment to ship everything else to you.”

Xavier knew this was coming. He’d known the moment he’d seen Jonasson’s helmet hit the glass. He wonders if the part of him that’s happy about it means he’s going to hell. 

“What happens to the lease on the apartment?” Xavier asks. What happens to Doug? he thinks. 

“Technically the Highlanders are the ones in control of the lease,” Ronnie says. “And you’ve already payed February’s rent. Nothing for you to do.”

Dick takes him out for overpriced coffee and goes over Xavier’s trade. Xavier doesn’t care all that much. The gist is, if Xavier agrees to go to therapy like a big boy and not freak the fuck out again, the Habs will take him through playoffs, and sign him to a new contract for next season if he behaves. They’ll pay him a bunch of money and give him a uniform and a place to sleep. 

Xavier almost leaves when Dick mentions the therapist. The first therapist the Habs stuck him with refused to prescribe sleeping pills for his nightmares and then declared him “beyond help” after four sessions. He lost his medical license a year later, but by then Xavier was already two fuck tapes in and playing for the Highlanders. 

“No fucking way,” Xavier says, pushing backwards in his chair. “No fucking way am I seeing whoever it is they’ve said I should see.” 

“Slow your roll, Xavier, we know,” Dick says. His tone is patronizing and he’s got his hands up in a “woah there” gesture. 

“It’s LaFlamme,” Xavier says. 

“Ok, LaFlamme, calm down,” Dick says. “It’s all taken care of. Your contract lets you see whoever you want. You just have to go.”

“Fine,” Xavier says. 

“Fine,” Dick agrees. 

Xavier refuses Dick’s offer to drive him home. Instead he buys a 12-pack of beer and lugs it home on the bus. If he has a hangover tomorrow on the plane, so be it — he is not having whatever conversation is about to happen sober. 

By the time he’s back in his neighborhood, Xavier has managed to psych himself up. Everything’s gonna be fine. He’s gonna tell Doug he’s been sent up, and then maybe if he’s lucky Doug will give him a hug in celebration, and then they can get drunk and shoot the shit. Maybe if he’s really lucky Doug will whip out his dumpster piss story again and Xavier can sleep in his bed one more time. He hauls the beer up the stairs and balances it with one arm as he jiggles the key in the lock. He shoves the door open and stops short. 

Doug is sitting on the couch, bottle of beer already in hand. Eva is sitting next to him.


	3. Montreal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"If there is a line, I'll cross it  
>  No lesson will I learn  
> Even if I'm standing on it  
> No bridge that I won't burn” ___

Eva made it three months into the off-season before she broke it off with Doug. Doug went back to Massachusetts for the Fourth of July and when he came back he was single. (And if Xavier stopped bringing one night stands back to the apartment around the same time that was nobody’s business but his.) By the time November rolled around, Doug and Eva had been texting, and Xavier knew that he met up with her after games sometimes. But she’d never come back to the apartment. The last time she’d done that, she and Doug had been a thing. Xavier knows how to connect the dots. 

That night, he came into the apartment, stowed the beer in the fridge, said he was going to bed early, and shut himself in his bedroom. He packed all his athletic clothes and his cleanest pair of sweatpants into a duffle and hung his suit off the back of his closet door. Then he climbed into bed and blasted music through his headphones until his brain felt like mush and he eventually fell asleep. A taxi came for him at six the next morning. 

Doug called once while he was still in the taxi, again while Xavier was checking in to his flight, three more times between security and his gate, and again right before Xavier shut off his phone for takeoff. 

Now or never, Xavier thought, and deleted Doug’s number. 

“Your phone is buzzing again.” Xavier looks up from the TV to see Simon looking pointedly at Xavier’s phone. It’s face-down and threatening to buzz off the side of the coffee table. Xavier scowls and grabs it.

“It’s nothing. I’ll call them back later.”

“Yeah right,” Simon says. “Man, you never answer your phone. Who keeps calling you?”

“It’s no one,” Xavier says, shoving his phone into his pocket. It’s still buzzing. “You want to watch another episode?”

“Nah,” Simon says. “I've got PT in an hour. When does your flight leave?"

Xavier pulls out his phone again to check the time. He swipes away the missed call notification before Simon can see it. 

“Flight’s at three. I should go home, get my shit.” He stands from the couch and stretches. He pulled his shoulder in the game against the Caps two days ago, but the pain is mostly gone now. 

“Have a good game, man” Simon says. He stands too, and Xavier accepts his one-armed hug. “Score a goal for me, yeah?”

“Yeah, whatever man,” Xavier says, but he smiles. It’s hard not to like Simon. 

Simon Jonasson ended his rookie season on February 8, 2013. In what most pundits later agreed was the worst hit of the season, Jonasson was slammed head-first into the boards by an Oilers defenseman midway through the third period. He suffered a severe concussion, a bruised jaw, and a fractured wrist. He ended the season just ten goals shy of breaking the record of most goals scored in a rookie season, a record set in 2009 by Xavier LaFlamme. Like Xavier, he was carted off the ice in a stretcher. Like Xavier, he woke to an unfamiliar hospital room and a pounding headache. Unlike Xavier, he couldn't remember the hit that toppled him. The twenty minutes leading up to his injury were blank. Xavier surprises himself by not hating Jonasson for that. 

Xavier drives back home with the windows rolled down. It’s still not breaking 10 degrees at midday, but the sun is out, and Montreal is tolerably pretty in April. He and Simon made an aborted attempt at hooking up about three weeks after Simon was first carted home from the hospital, but a blow job and a couple of awkward kisses later their relationship dissolved into regular hangouts on Simon’s couch to watch shitty daytime television and bitch about Simon’s crush on his physical therapist. Now Xavier tries to see Simon the mornings before he flies out for roadies. It’s partly to see his friend, yeah, but it’s also the only way he won’t smoke an entire pack of cigarettes before he gets on the plane. His shrink, Dr. Roy, says it’s a good thing, or at the very least better than cigarettes, and if Xavier now watches Fixer Upper at least once a week, it’s not like the rest of the team needs to know.

Xavier’s got an apartment in a building downtown. Three of his teammates live in the same building. Xavier tries to hate it — the place is modern and soulless and tacky — but it also doesn’t smell like urine and has central heating. His fancy new NHL salary pays for a cleaning service once a week and pre-prepared food delivery. He doesn’t have to think about anything but hockey. He definitely doesn’t have to think about Doug and his Highlanders dish towel. 

He hasn’t talked to anyone on the Highlanders since he left. He barely talked to them before, and part of his contract with the Highlanders was a promise to stay the fuck off social media until he calmed the fuck down, and he never bothered to reactivate his accounts when the ban was lifted in September. He doubts anyone from his old team would even want to hear from him anyway. He talks to Simon, he talks to his linemates, his coaches, his trainers, and his shrink. He plays hockey until he’s too tired to think, and then he passes out and prays for dreamless sleep. It usually isn’t.

Xavier parks in the building’s garage and takes the stairs seven flights up to his apartment. He showers, eats, pulls his suit out of its dry-cleaning bag, and tosses an extra stick of deodorant and another pack of cigarettes into his duffel. He thinks about taking a nap, then thinks better of it. An hour and an episode of House Hunters later, he’s back in his car, this time with Henderson, a 4th line center, sitting shotgun. 

“X-man!” Henderson says, punching Xavier in the shoulder by way of greeting. Xavier winces; it’s the shoulder he pulled. 

“Fender,” Xavier says, avoiding having to look at Henderson by peering into the oncoming traffic. 

“You at J’s place this morning?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Nothing, just wondering how he’s doing. It’s gotta suck being stuck at home this close to playoffs.”

“Uh huh,” Xavier says. “I’m gonna turn on the radio.”

The flight to Buffalo is loud, and it’s only a degree above freezing when Xavier gets off the plane. They head straight to the stadium, and Xavier loses himself in the routine of pregame stretches, talks from coaches, questions from press, and chatter from teammates. His phone buzzes with an incoming text and he ignores it. He does a lap of the rink during warmups and thinks about the plays he ran yesterday at practice. He gets a final okay from one of the trainers for his shoulder, roars along with the rest of the team as Gionta gives the pregame pep talk, and skates out onto the ice for the national anthem. 

It’s a hell of a game. Not seven minutes in Prust gets into a fight, and when Xavier skates out with his line for the power play he wills all of his nerves into a ball that he can deal with later, and sends the puck to the back of the Sabres' net to a thunder of protests from the watching stadium. He shakes his fist in the air in triumph and grins at Desharnais, who grins back. 

There’s another fight in the second period, but Xavier is pumped up on his goal, and he shoulders his way through a check to get an assist to Gallagher. He gets another assist when P.K. scores the final goal of the night at the tail end of the third, and Xavier feels lighter than air. They win five to one, and Xavier sends a swift prayer out to whatever poor SOB bartender gets to deal with his team tonight. They fly midmorning to Toronto tomorrow, but tonight the team wants to celebrate. 

Xavier is sitting outside the bar, drunk, watching his breath as it freezes in front of him. He smiles. He fucking loves winning! He loves hockey! He loves Doug too, speaking of which. He pulls out his phone. The text notification is still there from when it buzzed before the game. It’s past midnight now, but Xavier opens his messaging app to reply. 

Hey, it’s Doug. Good luck tonight Xavier! Go Habs! the text reads. It’s from an unknown number that Xavier knows by heart. Xavier sends we wpn! back. Shit. He tries again.

Wr wpn

we wpn

wpn

wpn

WON

He’s got a voicemail too. He brings the phone to his ear, closes his eyes, and listens. 

“Hey Xavier, it’s me Doug. Good luck today at your game! I saw there was a fight the last game. I wish I could help you fight. Anyway, have a good time!”

Xavier dials. The call goes to voicemail. Xavier takes the phone from his ear and frowns. It’s past midnight. Doug must be asleep. He remembers he’s supposed to be leaving a voicemail. He brings the phone back to his ear. 

“Doug!” he says, and laughs. “We won! I scored, it was great, Doug. Hockey is great!” He whoops, and ends the call. He stands there for a moment, then the door to the bar opens behind him.

“Xavier, get your ass back inside!” someone calls, and Xavier complies. 

He dreams that he’s lying on his back at center ice. His head pounds, and the rink swims. He’s watching Simon, way down in the Oilers’ defensive zone, getting slammed into the glass. He wakes up dry heaving. He opens the window to the frigid air and has a cigarette. Then another. He doesn’t go back to sleep. 

They lose to the Leafs in Toronto. Then to the Flyers. Then to the Penguins. Xavier’s shoulder gets worse and he sits out the game they do win against the Lightning, only to come back just in time to lose to the Caps for the second time in as many weeks. It’s a shitty few days, made worse by the fact that his phone won’t stop ringing. Buffalo wasn't the first time he’s responded to Doug while drunk, and it won’t be the last. At least a sober Xavier knows to just let the phone ring. Doug’s got Eva, he’ll be fine. 

Xavier is not fine. His nightmares have been getting steadily worse. The night they lose to the Caps he feigns a bathroom break between the second and third periods to have a panic attack in one of the stalls. He has to concentrate so hard on not dropping his stick during the third period that he fumbles a pass and gives the puck away to a Caps forward. He pivots and hurls the puck into the Hab’s defensive zone and Ovechkin’s waiting stance. Xavier watches Ovechkin score through eyes heavy with exhaustion. The playoffs are getting nearer, and he thinks longingly of the off-season, when a prescription for a sleeping pill won’t risk fucking up his sleep schedule before a game. 

“I’m inclined to get you started now regardless,” Dr. Roy says at their next session. It’s in person for once, and Xavier leans back in the massive plush armchair Dr. Roy has for her patients. She’s got a tank of tropical fish in one corner of her office that Xavier always catches himself wishing he could tell Doug about. He hasn’t told Dr. Roy about Doug. He doesn’t know what he’d say. 

“Your sleep schedule is already affected by your nightmares,” Dr. Roy says, “and we don’t know how far along you’ll get in the playoffs. You’ve got your journal, and we can do more rounds of IRT if you’re interested, but those are long term solutions. Another month of this isn’t really an option. We want you feeling better going into your off-season, not worse.” 

“Yeah, well, right now I feel like shit,” Xavier says. Dr. Roy doesn’t mind the swearing. It’s one of the reasons Xavier is still seeing her. “It’s like I can’t go one night without seeing Simon or Rhea in my dreams. Last time this happened I started doing ecstasy.”

“I know,” she says. “We’re going to do what we can here so you don’t find yourself in that place again.”

Xavier’s phone buzzes. 

“Great,” Xavier says, and reaches for the prescription slip. 

They win their last game of the regular season four to one against the Leafs. Simon flies up with the team for the game, and Xavier takes him to celebrate at Bluelight, the club Xavier likes in downtown Toronto with a strict “no photos” policy. 

“You told me about this place on that roadie, and then a week later I beefed it!” laughs Simon. “I never got to go.”

“You’re here now,” Xavier says, trying not think about Simon “beefing it". For once he's going easy on the alcohol. His new pills have helped, but they make him feel woozy if he stays up too late. He doesn’t want to make a stupid decision that involves drunk texting Doug. 

“So now that we’re in a gay bar for closeted rich people,” Simon says, “you want to tell me about your secret ex-boyfriend back in Halifax?” Xavier chokes on his beer.

“What?” he says.

“You know, that unknown number that always texts you good luck before games.” Simon says. 

“How do you know it’s not a secret ex-girlfriend?” Xavier asks. 

“I’m pretty sure ‘Doug’ is a guy’s name,” Simon says. “And who the hell says their own name on texts?”

“He’s not a secret boyfriend,” Xavier groans. Fuck, he doesn’t want to talk about this. 

“Okay,” Simon says, drawing the word out. “Is he the reason you’ve only sucked my dick twice?”

“You were a lot cuter back in February,” Xavier says. 

“Ha, ha” Simon says. “C’mon, who is this guy?”

“He’s my old roommate,” Xavier admits. “He’s the enforcer on the Highlanders. Absolutely shit at hockey, but he can punch.”

“No way! Doug the Thug?” Simon says. “You’ve got Doug the Thug wishing you luck before every game, and he’s not your secret boyfriend?”

“He’s dating Eva,” Xavier says. “And I’m not going back to Halifax. It’s not like I’ll see him again.”

“Dude,” Simon says. “I dunno who Eva is, but you’re a fucking idiot.”

“Yeah,” Xavier says, taking a swig of beer. “I know.”

The night before their first playoff game against the Senators, Xavier dreams again of Doug visiting him with flowers in his hospital bed. He wakes up with a boner and an itch that he has to scratch. He looks up Doug’s player profile on the Highlanders' website, and finds the date of his birthday. May 9th. The date of Game 5, if the Habs make it that far. 

Xavier hasn’t been paying attention to the Calder at all. Three months ago it was all anyone on the Highlanders could talk about — how this year, they weren’t just gonna make it to playoffs, they were gonna win the playoffs. He pulls up the game schedule. The Highlanders have their Game 3 against the Pirates today. If they win they’ll be through to Round 2. He sees with some satisfaction that the Shamrocks didn’t make it this year. Serves them right, those fucking assholes. He leans back away from his phone screen and thinks about Doug and the rest of his old team getting through to Round 2. He wonders if anyone is going to buy Doug a drink on his birthday. Eva, probably.

The Habs lose Game 1. They manage to gain a one-point lead in the second, but the Senators come back in the third with three more goals, and Xavier knows it’s a lost cause. He looks at his phone afterwards, at the unread texts from Doug. He thinks about Simon calling him an idiot. He pockets his phone. He has a nightmare that night, but the details are hazy when he wakes up in the morning, and he can’t remember if it was him or Simon he saw getting slammed into the ice, over and over again. 

They win Game 2, and Xavier manages to whip the puck past an Ottawa d-man to Ryder for their third goal at the end of the second. Xavier spends the two-hour bus ride to Ottawa the next day steadfastly ignoring his messaging app and playing sudoku instead. They lose Game 3 with a humiliating five-point deficit that makes their loss in Game 4 tame in comparison. Xavier gets back to Montreal an exhausted mess. They need to win Game 5. Otherwise it’s over. 

Xavier breathes out and lets his world narrow to nothing but the ice in front of him. The buzzer sounds, and he shoots forward, winning the face-off and sidestepping past the Senators' offense. He sends the puck to Pacioretty, who loses it to one of the Senators' d-men. Xavier changes direction and flies back towards the center line, just in time for P.K. to launch the puck his way. He gets it, whips around, passes to Pacioretty again, he feints and passes back, and then Xavier is right there in front of the Senators' goal, and he careens forward, letting the puck lose with a straight shot into the upper right corner of the net, where the shot is blocked by the Senators' goalie, and then Xavier’s line is off the ice. He breathes deep and takes a swig of water. He was so close. 

It hasn’t been a good game. The Senators scored their first goal just two minutes in, and the Habs just can’t seem to break that momentum. Xavier thought they had a chance going into the second, still riding high on P.K.’s goal 15 seconds before the end of the first, but no such luck. They don’t score again in the second, and now at the start of the third they’re losing three to one. Xavier grits his teeth. It can’t end like this. It can’t. 

The Senators score four minutes later. Xavier is on the ice, and he let’s himself swear in frustration. Then he’s back in it, swerving and dodging, forgetting for a moment his fear that a fight will break out, or that someone will check him so hard he goes airborne, or that something else will go wrong and he’ll see the bright red of fresh blood on the ice. He feels like the wind, his skates letting him speed past the Ottawa defense with the puck, where he passes to Desharnais who shoots… and misses. Six minutes later the Senator’s score again. The Habs are four points behind and they’ve got eight minutes to make it up. Xavier tries not feel hopeless. He just keeps skating. 

They lose 6-1. It’s a home game, so at least Xavier has the comfort of moping in his own bed tonight instead of some random Ottawa hotel. The locker room is stifling, the crush of bodies and equipment suffocating. He stumbles his way through press (“Yeah, sometimes all you can do is just keep skating, keep making shots, and when they don’t connect it can be tough blah blah blah”) and finally escapes out into the May night. 

He gets in his car and just sits there. He hates to lose, he hates it. He wishes Simon was there to talk to, or Doug. Fuck he misses Doug. He misses Doug so much. He misses drinking with him, and laughing with him, and knowing that someone on that stupid godforsaken team always had his back. He doesn’t regret going back to the Habs. But he wishes Doug was here. Xavier could wish him a happy birthday. He could buy him a drink. 

Xavier takes out his phone and dials. 

At first he thinks the call is going to go to voicemail. It rings and rings, and Xavier almost gives up when there’s a click, and the sound of loud music and people talking comes down the line. 

“Hello?” Doug says. 

“Doug,” Xavier says. 

“Xavier,” Doug says. 

I’m a fucking idiot, Xavier thinks. 

“Happy birthday,” he says. “I- I just wanted to say happy birthday.”

“Oh,” Doug says. Someone shouts in the background of the call, and Xavier can’t hear what Doug says next.

“What?” Xavier says. 

“-going outside,” Doug says, and then the background noise stops abruptly. There’s a pause. Xavier can’t think of what else to say. 

“I’m sorry,” Doug says. “About the game.” Right. The game. 

“Yeah,” Xavier says. “It’s bullshit. You were watching?”

“Yeah, the whole team’s here.”

“Perfect. Bet they’re all happy I lost, huh?”

“No, they’re not. I saw Megster, he was angry. They’re upset that you lost, Xavier, they miss you.”

“Oh,” Xavier says. That’s nice, he supposes. “I didn’t-” 

“I miss you, too,” says Doug. “Xavier, why don’t you want to talk to me anymore?”

Aaaand there it is. Xavier exhales.

“It’s not like that, I-” 

“You left without even saying anything. I thought you went to the rink early, but then you weren’t there. I asked Ronnie and he said you were in Montreal.”

“I’m sorry, Doug,” Xavier tries to say. I’m an idiot, I’m sorry, I’m an idiot. Doug keeps going. 

“I called you over and over. And I texted you! Eva told me to stop texting her when we broke up, but you never said that, so I kept texting you. And you never texted back!” His voice is getting louder. “And I called you too, and you wouldn’t answer. And then you would leave a voicemail, and you would be drunk, so I would call again to see if you were okay, and you wouldn’t answer again.”

“I’m sorry Doug-” I’m an idiot, I’m a fucking idiot!

“Eva said I should stop texting you. She said you were ghosting me. She says sometimes she can be a bad friend, so she knows. But I missed you, Xavier.”

“I miss you too,” Xavier says. “Fuck, Doug, I’m sorry. I miss you and I’m sorry and I fucked up. I know. And today’s your birthday, and I, I just-” Deep breath. “Did Eva buy you a drink?”

“What?”

“Did Eva buy you a drink?” Xavier repeats. “For your birthday. You always get people drinks, so I thought, maybe Eva got you one?”

“Eva isn’t here,” Doug says. “She’s at her girlfriend’s house.” 

This conversation has officially gone off the rails. 

“Her what?”

“Her girlfriend. Maxine.”

“Eva has a girlfriend?”

“Yeah, Xavier. I thought you knew about that.”

“No, I didn’t know! Then why was she at our apartment?”

“Because she’s my friend,” Doug says.

“Oh,” Xavier says. 

“Xavier, I’m angry at you,” Doug says. “But I’m glad you said sorry. And I’m sorry you lost that game. I wanted the Habs to win.”

“Oh, uh, me too,” Xavier says. “I want the Highlanders to win. And it makes sense, that you’re angry. I’m an idiot.”

“No,” Doug says. “You’re not.”

They hang up pretty quickly after that. Xavier feels like he’s run a marathon. Instead of processing everything, he goes home, pops a sleeping pill, and goes to sleep. He doesn’t dream.

“Your secret boyfriend’s girlfriend has a girlfriend,” Simon says. He’s paused Oprah mid-sentence, and her mouth seems to hang open in the exact same expression of confusion that Simon is wearing. 

“He’s not my boyfriend!” Xavier says. He leans back on the couch and covers his eyes. He wants a beer. “And yeah, basically.”

“And you’re texting again.”

“I mean, it’s been one day, but yeah.”

“And you’re in love with him.”

“No comment.”

“C’mon, LaFlamme, you’re a big boy!” Simon says, elbowing him. “Tell me the truth and I’ll let you spend the night.” Xavier glares at him from between his fingers.

“Why would I want to spend the night?”

“Because then you can drink as much as you want while you watch your boyfriend beat the Falcons.”

“You suck.”

“Xavier.”

“You’re the worst.”

“Xavier!”

“Fuck!” Xavier shouts. He grinds the heels of palms into his eyelids. “I…like him! A lot! I haven’t fucked anyone since December!” 

“Romantic,” Simon says. “Game starts in an hour. Let’s go buy some beer."

It’s strange to watch his old team through a television. Doug gets into a fight not four minutes in, punching a Falcon who checked Kim too hard upside the head almost before the other guy can get his gloves off. Simon cheers, and Xavier opens a second beer. The Highlanders clearly haven’t suffered too much for his absence. Their plays are tight, with Kim, Megster, and Stevsie making up an impressive first line. Megster’s control has improved, and he zips past the Falcon’s defense to score. Xavier and Simon roar in appreciation. 

The Highlanders score two more goals in less than three minutes, and then another five minutes after that. Before the end of the first they’re leading the Falcons 4-0 and Xavier is lightheaded with beer and pride. He cheers along with Simon when Doug gets into his second fight of the night, this time on behalf of Gordie. The Falcons get a single goal in two seconds before the end of the third, and the Highlanders finish Game 1 of the semifinals with a resounding win. The post-game coverage includes a shot of the locker room, where Xavier catches sight of the twins humping Belchie’s helmet before the camera rapidly cuts away to Kim and Megster. 

“Do you miss it?” Simon asks. 

“No,” Xavier says, and means it. “This year was good because the hockey was good. But they’re all dickheads. I don’t want to play with them again.”

“Cheers,” Simon says, and drinks. 

The Habs sign Xavier on to a shiny new one-year contract, and Xavier starts letting himself settle in to Montreal. He finally unpacks all his shit that Ronnie had sent from Halifax and starts making all the changes Dr. Roy recommended to his bedroom. It feels stupid and girly to have a lavender scented pillow and rain sounds, but between that, the sleeping pills, and his sessions with her, his nightmares are getting back under control. He’s down to less than a pack of cigarettes a week, and when he tells this to Simon, Simon gives him an honest-to-god hug. It feels weird, knowing that there are more people than just Doug who have his back.

Doug and the Highlanders slaughter the Falcons in the semi-finals, beating them four games to zero. May turns to June, bringing a series of hot days that get Xavier out of his ratty sweatshirts and into his rattier wifebeaters. He watches the Calder conference finals with Simon, hurling popcorn at the TV screen whenever the Penguins score against Belchie. Then the Highlanders beat the Penguins 7-0 in Game 5, and that’s it. The Highlanders, for the first time in twenty years, are in the Calder Cup Finals. 

Xavier can’t text to save his life, and even now that’s he in regular contact with Doug, all he manages to send after five minutes of typing and retyping is six exclamation points. 

“Nice,” Simon observes over his shoulder.

“Man, fuck off,” Xavier says. Then his phone lights up with an incoming call. It’s Doug. “Shit,” he says. 

“Dude, you’re such a baby,” Simon says. “Just answer it, and I’ll go down to Shoppers and get us some off-season junk food, yeah?”

“Fine,” Xavier says, and accepts the call as Simon steps out the front door. “Doug?”

“Xavier!” Doug sounds exhausted and elated. There’s whooping in background, and Xavier thinks he can hear the twins shouting. “Xavier, we won! We’re going to the finals!”

“I saw, man!” Xavier says, and sits down on the couch. He can’t stop his smile; Doug’s jubilation is infectious. “Fuck, man, that game was awesome!”

“It felt awesome!” Doug says. “Did you see my fight?”

“Yeah, and your assist!” 

“And Kim’s hat trick!”

“Man, wasn’t he in medical school?”

“Oh yeah,” Doug says. “He still is, he has a year left. I help him study sometimes, because I can memorize all the footnotes.”

“Woah, that’s- that’s actually really cool,” Xavier says. “Man, why aren’t you a doctor?”

“I can remember things, but I don’t understand them,” Doug says. “It takes me a long time, usually, to understand.”

“Oh, well, that’s okay,” Xavier says, feeling like an asshat. “And hey, it’s cool that you, like, use it for good, you know? To remember things about people, like their birthdays.”

“I thought you didn’t like it when I remembered people’s birthdays.” Xavier’s face heats.

“What?”

“Yeah,” Doug says, "I remember, you were drunk and you said that you didn’t want me to-” 

“Ahhh!” Xavier shouts, cutting Doug off. His face is on fire. “It’s- look, it’s not- I’m not- I was drunk! And I didn’t mean it! It’s cool, yeah? Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay,” Doug says easily. “But I meant it, okay? When I said you were special.”

“Oh Jesus, Doug-” 

“And I’m still kinda angry,” Doug says, “that you wouldn’t talk to me. But you said sorry. And I want to forgive you. So I’m gonna.”

“Christ, Doug, you don’t have to, I know I fucked up-” 

“I want to,” Doug says.

“Okay,” Xavier says. 

“I have to go,” Doug says. “The team, we’re gonna go celebrate now. Eva’s bringing Maxine!”

Xavier laughs. He can’t help it. 

“Go on then,” he says. “And maybe I’ll- look, maybe I’ll see you soon, okay?”

“Yeah, okay!” There’s a burst of noise from Doug’s end of the line, someone that sounds like Ronnie shouting, and then the call cuts off. Xavier looks down at his phone for a moment in silence. 

“Fuck it,” he says to the empty apartment, and starts looking up flights.


	4. Halifax, Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Coming back to where we started  
>  I'm only passing through  
> I've become a ghost in your garden  
> Fading into view" ___

The heat wave that passed through Montreal is nowhere to be seen in Halifax. It’s wet and cold, with low clouds that obscure Xavier’s view of the city and coastline until the plane is just a few hundred meters above the ground, and by then Xavier can’t see much at all beyond the tarmac and surrounding trees. There’s a commotion at baggage claim when some college kid recognizes him and wants his autograph (“Dude, your videos from back in the day are insane, go Highlanders!”). He escapes when his phone buzzes with a text from Doug, and then he’s out the doors and looking around for Doug’s shitty car. It’s misty and getting dark, and Xavier takes a second to just breathe in the familiar air and let the glare of headlights and stink of exhaust wash over him. 

A car horn goes off. Xavier looks up, and there’s Doug, pulling up to the curb. The car turns off with a rattle, and then Doug is bounding out of the car, rounding the hood, and striding towards Xavier with a huge smile. 

“Xavier!” he laughs, and sweeps Xavier nearly off his feet in a hug. Xavier lets it happen. Doug feels huge around him, and Xavier holds still in his embrace, face pressed into Doug’s sweatshirt. Then he wrestles backwards. 

“C’mon man, I can’t breathe.”

Doug grabs Xavier’s duffle and tosses it in the back, and Xavier climbs into the passenger seat. Doug talks the whole way back, about the Highlanders and their game schedule, about Eva and her girlfriend, about Ira and his husband, about the weather, about the apartment, about the Latin words in Kim’s textbook that Kim has taught him to pronounce. Xavier watches trees fly past on either side of the 102 and listens. 

The apartment is the same when they pull up. Xavier wasn't sure if he was gonna feel nostalgic for it, but as Doug shoves the door open and Xavier sees the dumpy old couch and weightlifting set, he doesn’t feel much of anything. The apartment is far cleaner than he’s ever seen it, and as the door shuts behind him the nasty smell coming from the hallway all but disappears.

Ronnie never ended up giving Doug another roommate, and Xavier puts his things down in his old room. All of his detritus is gone, but the desk and bed and old chest of drawers are still there. Still, he feels like a visitor in this room. It’s not his home anymore. The thought makes him smile. 

Here’s the thing: Xavier has missed Doug. He hasn’t missed Halifax, and he hasn’t missed the Highlanders. He spent the worst years of his life here. He’s glad to be gone. That said, when Doug drags him into the bar that night and the whole team is there to greet him, Xavier doesn’t feel bitter. He claps Kim and Megster on the back, ignores the twins frankly disgusting hand gestures, and settles in for the night. At some point, Eva shows up, a girl that Xavier assumes is Maxine at her side. Maxine is tall and muscular, with a curtain of black hair down to her waist. She looks like she could take half the guys on the team, Doug included. Doug lights up when he sees them, and pulls them over to where Xavier sits with Kim and Stevsie.

“So you’re Xavier!” Maxine says. She has a heavy Quebecois accent that drips like syrup. “I’ve heard all about you from Doug. You play for the Habs, yes?” 

“Moved back up in February,” confirms Xavier. 

“You know, I’ve never actually been to Montreal,” she says. 

“No shit,” Eva says. 

“How’d you manage that?” Kim asks. 

“Simple,” Maxine says. “I grew up in Saguenay, came here for school, and didn’t go anywhere else.”

“Well, you’ll have to come visit,” Xavier says, who on his third beer is feeling generous. 

“Can I visit you?” Doug asks. 

“Of course, man!” Xavier says.

“Awesome!” Doug says, and grins. Xavier smiles back. It’s so much easier to be in love with Doug when he’s drunk. He feels like less of shitstain. 

They leave the bar relatively early, considering the Highlanders’ penchant for drinking even on back-to-back game days. Doug and Xavier walk home, shoulders hunched against the drizzle. 

“I really did miss you,” Doug says. “I’m glad you’ll get to see me play.”

“Are you still angry at me?” Xavier asks, regretting it the moment the words are out of his mouth. But then Doug says, “No, not really,” and Xavier looks over at him. 

“Why?”

“Because, I can tell that you’re sorry,” Doug says. “And I’m too happy to be angry right now.”

“But why?” Xavier asks. He has to know. “Why are you so happy? I’m fucked up, Doug.”

“No, you’re not,” Doug says. He slings an arm around Xavier’s shoulders, and Xavier stumbles into his side. “You’re special.”

They walk the rest of the way home with Xavier tucked into Doug’s side. When they get back to Doug’s apartment, Doug brightens. 

“I just remembered!” Doug says. “I got you something.” He runs into his room and reemerges a moment later with a poorly wrapped present. He hands it to Xavier. 

“It’s for your apartment in Montreal.”

Xavier takes the present and sits down at the kitchen table to open it. It’s squishy, probably fabric. He tears open the paper, and sees a flash of blue and orange. He lifts the thing out of the paper. 

It’s a dishtowel, identical to the one Doug bought over six months ago, with the Highlanders’ mascot emblazoned across one half of it. 

“I saw you looking at my dishtowel sometimes,” Doug says. “I thought maybe you want one too. Yours were pretty gross.”

“Thank you,” Xavier says. “And I meant it, yeah? When I said you could come visit. Anytime, man.” He looks up from the dishtowel, and Doug is just standing there, looking at him. 

“What?” Xavier asks.

“Can I hug you?” Doug asks. Xavier feels himself go red. He makes himself keep looking at Doug. 

“Yeah, Doug,” he says. Doug walks the short distance between them and bends, wrapping his arms around Xavier and leaning his head on Xavier’s shoulder. Xavier raises his arms and wraps them around Doug, still holding the dishtowel in one hand. 

“Doug,” Xavier says, looking past Doug’s shoulder to the ceiling. 

“Yeah?” comes the response, muffled by Xavier’s sweatshirt. 

“What do you mean, when you say I’m special?”

There’s a pause. Xavier keeps his gaze on the ceiling, and holds his breath. 

“I think it means a lot of things,” Doug says. “It was my job to protect you. I was proud about that. And then we started being friends, and I would notice when you laughed or said nice things to me. You scored goals for me. And when Eva and I broke up, I wasn’t as sad as I thought I would be, because you were there.”

Xavier exhales, conscious of how loud his breathing seems in the quiet apartment. Doug keeps talking into Xavier’s shoulder. 

“I like you, Xavier. I like you a lot. I like hugging you, and drinking with you, and dancing with you. I was so happy when you danced with me at Ira’s birthday. And when you left, I was so worried. And sad. It didn’t feel like when Eva broke up with me. It felt worse.”

“Because I’m special,” Xavier breathes. 

“Yeah,” Doug says. “You’re special, Xavier.” 

“I’m all fucked up,” Xavier says. 

“You’re not,” Doug says. 

“I am,” Xavier says. “I’m an asshole. I’m afraid all the time, Doug. I don’t know if I’ll ever stop being afraid.”

“Are you afraid of me?” Doug asks. Xavier laughs. He lets his grip tighten on the back of Doug’s shirt.

“No,” he says. “You’re like a teddy bear. I’m not afraid of you.”

“Can we stay like this a little longer?” Doug asks. 

“Yeah,” Xavier says, and closes his eyes. 

They break apart eventually. Xavier sleeps in his own bed that night. Or at least he tries. He wakes up tangled in his sheets from another nightmare of Ross Rhea slamming into him, knocking him prone. Someone is hammering on his door.

“Xavier! Xavier are you ok?” It’s Doug. 

“I’m fine,” he gasps, and sits up. The knob turns, and Doug is there, standing awkwardly at the foot of his bed. 

“Another nightmare?” Doug asks. 

“Yeah,” Xavier says. 

“Did sleeping in my bed help last time?” Doug asks. 

“Maybe,” Xavier says. He steels himself. “Could we try it the other way? You can sleep here.”

“Yeah, okay!” Doug says, and he clambers into bed, just like that. He tucks himself up behind Xavier, an arm slung over his waist. “Is this okay?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” Xavier says. He closes his eyes, and tries to go back to sleep. 

Xavier sleeps late, and when he wakes up, Doug has already left for morning practice. Xavier lays there, trying to get up the energy to feel embarrassed about last night, but he can’t. He just feels wrung out, in a happy sort of way. Whatever the fuck that means. He gets out of bed eventually, stealing some of Doug’s eggs for breakfast. He goes on a long run after breakfast, past the Citadel to the South End and St. Mary’s, then back up Beaufort as it curves into Oxford. He raids Doug’s fridge again for lunch, then uses up his hot water in a long shower. He texts Simon, he watches shitty daytime television, and then he hails a taxi to the Metro Center. Time to watch some goddamn fucking hockey. 

The Highlanders lose 1-3 to the Griffins. They lose the next night too, and then Doug is gone on a plane to Michigan, leaving Xavier behind to watch over the apartment. They’ve slept in the same bed for three nights running, and Xavier is starting to feel like he used to, back when his love life consisted of bar hookups. He’s settling back into his skin, getting into his game. He wants Doug. He’s starting to feel like he can do something about it. 

Doug and the Highlanders are in Michigan for five days, during which Xavier goes on runs, tries to stick to his off-season workout routine, and with Ronnie’s grudging blessing, gets in some ice time at the rink. He watches the Highlanders as they lose Game 3, then come back and win two nights in a row with Games 4 and 5. The talking heads are divided on the Highlanders' chances; Xavier flips off the TV whenever one of them brings up Doug’s less-than-stellar puck control as a weak link in the Highlanders' offense. 

Doug gets home at noon the day before Game 6, tired and quiet. Xavier doesn’t push it, cooking some halfway decent chicken for dinner and slipping under the sheets next to Doug before he can second-guess himself. 

“You’re going to win,” he says, but Doug is already asleep. 

“Fuck!” Xavier groans. 

“Cock-suckers!” Pat yells from beside him. He’s got his video camera out, filming the reaction of the crowd as Grand Rapids scores again. He’d shown up this morning at Doug’s apartment with a case of beer and some choice words for the Highlanders media team, who had refused to give him a press badge. 

The Griffins have the lead now, and Pat is practically frothing at the mouth, yelling something incoherent and probably disgusting at the Griffins’ number 15, who scored. Xavier quietly agrees with him. 

The Highlanders have the puck now, Gordie barreling forward with it like a battering ram. They’ve got Doug as close to offsides as he can get without the refs calling it, jostling for position in front of the Falcon’s goalie. Gordie passes to Stevsie, who ducks neatly around a check and twists with the puck, shooting it back to Gordie. Gordie loses it to a Griffin, and Xavier and Pat groan in unison as the action hurtles back towards the Highlanders' defensive zone. Oleg wins the puck back before the Griffins can shoot, then loses it again. Someone in the jumble of uniforms shoots, and Belchie blocks it. A cheer goes up in the stadium. Pat roars, then lets loose another cascade of insults, which are lost in the tumult. 

“How do you come up with half the shit you say?” Xavier asks as Pat sits back down. 

“I was born with a rare gift,” Pat says, not taking his eyes from the ice. Doug’s line is off the ice, and Kim’s line is making a valiant effort at keeping the puck in the neutral zone. Then Megster breaks away with the puck, and Kim follows.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!” Xavier urges. Megster passes to Kim, who passes to Evgeni, who almost loses it to the Griffin’s left winger, but instead passes to Oleg, who charges forward and gets it back up to Kim again. One of the Griffin’s d-men rushes Kim, but he glances off the check, gets the puck to Megster, who's in front of the goal, he shoots and-

“You ass-eating Grand Rapids pieces of shit! We’ll wipe the floor with you and teabag the remains, we’ll fuck you up, you bastards!” Xavier can see spittle at the corners of Pat’s lips as he yells. The few Griffins fans in the arena cheer on their goalie as the puck goes back into play. People are starting to stare at Pat. Xavier pulls him back down. 

“Shut the fuck up, okay?” he hisses. “I don’t need bad press right now.”

“Shit, fuck, you’re right, I’m sorry,” Pat says. “Just gets me all worked up, watching Dougie and his team, you know? All tingly.” He shivers in a way that makes Xavier want to take a shower. 

“Man, how did you end up friends with Doug anyway?”

“Oh, Dougie?” Pat says. He laughs. “I made fun of his brother back in sixth grade and he broke my nose. If you break his heart I’ll make sure they don’t find the body.”

“What-” Xavier starts, but then there’s a roar from the crowd, and Xavier looks back at the ice to see Doug and a Griffin circling each other, gloves and sticks discarded on the ice. He stands at the same time as Pat to roar his approval. 

Pat goes off to film b-roll for his weird TV show when the second period ends. The Highlanders haven’t scored again, but neither have the Griffins, and the score is parked at 2-1. Xavier buys himself a beer and tries to think positive thoughts. The Highlanders can turn this around. They’re going to win. 

Pat comes back and starts up a running commentary of insults about the Griffins, trying to get a laugh out of Xavier. Xavier remembers the last time they were in such close quarters, they had gotten into a literal spitting match. He wonders if all of Pat’s friendships start with fights. 

The puck drops and the third period starts. Xavier watches the blur of white and blue jerseys flash by on the ice. Megster is called for tripping not even a minute in, but the Griffins don’t get even a single shot on goal through the power play. Kim makes a shot on goal, then Stevsie. Then Gordie flicks one in top shelf with a finesse Xavier didn’t know the man possessed, and the stadium erupts in cheers. 

Pat launches out of his seat and starts doing a frankly disturbing victory dance. Xavier watches Doug pounding Gordie on the back, smiling huge. Just one more goal, Xavier thinks. Score one more goal and hold those bastards off and you’ll win.

Four minutes later and halfway through the period, it’s the Griffin’s number 2 that Pat graces with expletives. The buzzer sounds, and the Griffins pull ahead 3-2. 

C’mon, Xavier chants. Come on, come on, come on!

The Griffins don’t give an inch. Try as they might, no matter what line Ronnie sends out, no matter who he has Doug corner or intimidate or back up, the Highlanders can’t get another shot in. Xavier watches the timer tick down the minutes until it’s over. The Highlanders have never been this close to a Calder, ever. They would make history winning tonight. With less than a minute left on the clock, the Griffins score again. Xavier has barely recovered, and Pat is still screaming, when Belchie lets another through, and with five seconds left, the Griffins are at 5-2. Xavier sits, and the buzzer goes off. It’s over. The Highlanders have lost. 

After, there’s press and an angry Pat and series of texts from Simon. Xavier watches Pat try and console a crying Doug, and feels tired. The entire team decamps to a bar, where the atmosphere is sullen. Nobody is in the mood to do much of anything except drink. Then Ronnie stands up. His eyes are wet. 

“No fucking way,” Kim says from next to Xavier, and Xavier agrees. 

“Team, you’ve done me fucking proud this season,” Ronnie says. “Real fucking proud. Real-” he hiccups. “Real proud." He wipes his eyes, sits down, and takes a shot. 

“Yeah!” Doug says, clapping. Stevsie joins, elbowing Gordie, who also starts clapping. 

“Jesus Christ,” Xavier says, and turns back to his beer. 

It does get better, after that. Doug has recovered, and he and Stevsie keep up a stream of relentless positivity that means that by the third bar Megster is cracking dirty jokes with Pat and the twins have started getting Doug to memorize something in Russian that Xavier prays he never learns the Quebecois for. At some point Pat leaves, saying something about a cousin in Dartmouth. Doug gets up to leave too, and Xavier follows. 

The taxi home is quiet. Ten minutes from the apartment, Xavier looks over at Doug to see tears on his cheeks. 

“I’m okay, Xavier,” Doug says softly. He holds out his hand, palm up, and Xavier takes it. 

“You played real fucking good,” Xavier says. “Next year, you’ll win.”

“Yeah,” Doug says. He sniffs, and smiles at Xavier. “Thank you, Xavier.”

They get back to Doug’s apartment, and Doug sits down on the couch with a sigh to pull off his shoes. Xavier gets him a glass of water. 

“Drink,” he urges. Doug takes the water and gulps it down. A drop escapes and runs down his chin, then his throat. Xavier swallows. Head buzzing with alcohol, he leans down and puts his hand on Doug’s neck. 

“I know how to make you feel better,” he says. It’s a ridiculous line, but then, it’s been a ridiculous year. Doug’s breathing catches. 

“You do?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” Xavier whispers, and he kisses him. It’s quiet for a moment, just the sound of Doug’s breathing and the heat of Xavier’s palm resting against his pulse point. Then Doug pulls Xavier down into his lap and presses their mouths together again. Xavier holds tight, keeping both his hands on Doug’s neck and pulling him in. Doug’s hands come to rest in his hair, and Xavier grins like a wolf against Doug’s lips as Doug pulls it, turning Xavier's head so that he can deepen the kiss. Xavier hums, and Doug slides one hand out his hair and down his back, gripping him at the waist. He pulls away from Xavier’s mouth to kiss his neck, and Xavier smiles again. Doug shifts, and their hips meet, and Xavier smiles wider. He can’t help it. Xavier loves to win. 

Xavier wakes up the next morning with a hangover and sore hips. Last night is blurry, but Xavier remembers enough to know that it was good. Doug is asleep next to him, his huge shoulder rising and falling slightly as he breathes. Ignoring his headache, Xavier lets himself run a hand over it, feeling the muscle underneath. He kisses it, and as Doug stirs, he leans up to kiss him on the collar bone, then the neck. 

“Good morning, Xavier,” Doug says, starting to sit up. 

“Stay there,” Xavier says, pushing him back down. “I’m making up for the last year.”

“Year?” Doug asks, and then he stops talking as Xavier kisses him soundly on the mouth. 

Xavier flies back to Montreal the next day. Rick the Dick has somehow landed him a sponsorship deal with some hipster outdoor brand, and Xavier now has to sit through a photoshoot, a sponsorship dinner, and a commercial shoot. The thought makes him want to re-sign with the Highlanders, but he goes. He thinks about how 18-year-old Xavier would have killed for a sponsorship, any sponsorship. He’s a real fucking hockey player, and if that means parading around like an asshole in an overpriced denim jacket for three hours, so be it. 

He and Doug don’t talk about it, not really, not yet. The off-season has only just started, and Xavier makes more than enough money to pay for plane tickets back to Halifax whenever he wants. Doug has promised to visit once he’s gone home to see his family. Xavier figures they’ve got time. Montreal could always trade him, and Ronnie could always decide the Highlanders don’t need an enforcer anymore, and one of them could always take a bad hit and end up in the hospital again, but for once Xavier has decided not to worry about it. He books an appointment with Dr. Roy and starts looking up Thai restaurants to take Doug to.

He wakes up one night in mid-July, the day before Doug is meant to arrive in Montreal, covered in sweat. He lays there, still shaking from the feeling of Ross Rhea slamming him into the ice, and he forgives 19-year-old Xavier. What the fuck was he supposed to do with a TBI and PTSD except make stupid decisions? It’s not like the NHL did much except book him an appointment with the worst shrink this side of the Atlantic and pack him off to Halifax without so much as a “get well soon.” He was a kid. Fuck it, at 23 he’s still a kid. 19-year-old Xavier was an idiot, and a slut, and a shitty hockey player, but at least he kept himself alive, so Xavier could make it to 20. And 21. And 23. Fuck the Habs, and fuck the Highlanders, and fuck Ross Rhea. 19-year-old Xavier kept himself alive, and screw anyone who thinks that wasn’t damn impressive. He punches his pillow and puts his head back down. His last thought before he falls asleep is that Doug would probably be proud of him too. Maybe he’ll tell him about it in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I did perhaps obsessive ~~completely unnecessary~~ research for this fic, which I’m gonna tell you about whether you like it or not:  
> I've fudged the timeline from the original movie so that Xavier plays almost his full rookie season with Montreal before Rhea lays him out. The fic takes place in a fictional 2012-13 season where the NHL shutout never happened. The timeline I'm working with is:  
> Spring 2008 - Xavier is drafted by Montreal  
> Spring 2009 - Rhea fucks up Xavier's shit  
> Spring 2012 - The movie takes place  
> November 2012 - The fic starts
> 
> I've replaced all of the teams from the movie with their real-world counterparts, so Xavier is drafted by the Habs, not the Corsairs. The Shamrocks and Highlanders stay, but all other AHL teams have been swapped for their 2013 counterparts.
> 
> For the games Xavier plays with the Habs (a team I know next to nothing about), I just substituted him for Erik Cole on the line he played with David Desharnais and Max Pacioretty. The roadie Xavier takes in February is lifted wholesale from the Habs' 2013-14 season. The games he plays in April are the same as the Habs played in April 2013, including their Round One playoff games against the Senators.
> 
> The Highlanders Calder run is based off the games played by the Syracuse Crunch in 2013. The games the Highlanders play before Xavier moves up are totally fictional.
> 
> The term "dick trick" comes from an interview with Joe Thornton after another Sharks player scored four goals in a game. I first heard the term from the wonderful witches over at the You Can’t Do That podcast (if you like hockey and also Goofs please go listen to this podcast oh my god). The Joe Thornton interview is from October 2013, and this fic starts in late November 2012, but WHATEVER.  
> I ignored SO MANY THINGS about how professional hockey actually works. For example, Montreal’s *actual* AHL affiliate the Bulldogs, any of the players that were sent up and down between the Bulldogs and the Habs during Xavier’s career (one of whom was P.K. Subban, and the idea of him playing for the Highlanders is AMAZING but not the point of this fic), the timeline of P.K. Subban’s career with the Habs (or in fact any of the other players on that team), how hockey contracts work, how moving between the NHL and AHL works, and probably tons of other stuff. If you want a fic where hockey actually works, go read "From the Ground Up" by Rianne. Seriously, it’s amazing.  
> Thank you so much to my friend Tom for helping me out with details about Halifax and Montreal. If I got anything wrong, I'm sorry!  
> Thank you also to my proofreaders Lily and Matt, and to the group chat: I complained endlessly to you all, despite you not caring about Goon or pro hockey. More power to you.


End file.
